Dover police dispute woman's suicide in alleged 'sextortion case'

Saturday

Aug 2, 2014 at 3:15 AMAug 2, 2014 at 5:07 PM

Police have said that a city woman who committed suicide earlier this month did not take her own life because of sextortion. Members of the Dover Police Department have confirmed that the 24-year-old victim of John Bryan Villegas killed herself on July 10.

By Kimberley Haaskhaas@fosters.com

DOVER — Police have said that a city woman who committed suicide earlier this month did not take her own life because of sextortion.

Members of the Dover Police Department have confirmed that the 24-year-old victim of John Bryan Villegas killed herself on July 10. They also said she faced “numerous other stressful issues in her life” besides the sexual exploitation she suffered due to the Maine man's actions two years ago.

Villegas, 23, of 12 Dame Street, Apt. 1, in Kittery, Maine, pleaded guilty on Sept. 18, 2013, to cyber stalking the woman. Villegas was sentenced in federal court to serve 33 months in prison after prosecutors said he broke into the woman's home on April 7, 2012, stole a pair of underwear as well as a laptop computer, and began emailing the young mother, demanding that she send him explicit photos of herself.

The woman's suicide came to light because Bloomberg News recently reported that she was traumatized by the event and connected her case to the “growing and particularly invasive form of cyber stalking” that is getting the attention of law enforcement officials nationally.

The article appeared to link cyber stalking and the woman's suicide as it was republished in the New Hampshire Union Leader, based in Manchester, with a headline which read, “Dover mother commits suicide after 'sextortion' case.”

“Our investigation has NOT found any link between her death and that particular case,” Dover Police Lt. Brant Dolleman said. “That is not to say it did not play a role, perhaps it did, but there is no evidence that it did ... It would be unfortunate if her tragic death was reduced to simply being the result of that case.”

Chief Anthony Colarusso said his department always looks into the cause and manner of death when a resident passes away.

“We have no evidence that the death is related to the extortion,” Colarusso said.

The writer of the article, Del Quentin Wilber, said Wednesday that he did not draw a causal connection between the suicide and the mother's victimization. Instead, he had been working on a story about how devastating sextortion can be when the woman took her own life.

“I had been working on the story and planned to quote prosecutors and others — in court papers, interviews — about how devastating this crime can be,” Wilber said. “I felt the suicide was worth noting in the story because the crime had clearly taken a toll on her. I did not report a motivation for the suicide in the story because that is something we will never know with certainty. It is all very sad.”

Wilber added that, “Mental illness and suicide are very complicated issues, and I strive to cover them with sensitivity. That is one reason we did not name the mother in our report.”

Wilber also did not name Villegas in his report.

In connection with this case, Villegas has pleaded guilty to burglary for breaking into the house and stealing the woman's computer. Villegas was sentenced to a year in jail, which he will serve concurrently with his federal sentence, according to court documents.

Villegas is being held in a federal corrections facility in Miami, Fla., according to public records.